We are paying $2 trillions+ in salary and benefits for 22 millions gov’t workers in a year!!!

Submitted by IWB, on June 20th, 2012

Here’s a chart of ALL government employees:

~22,000,000 Gov’t workers?! I didn’t realise it was that high.

The average Gov’t pay is much higher than the national average (this is known) private employee pay, but let’s use the national average pay of $42,000. $42,000 X 22,000,000 = $924,000,000,000 annually. But that doesn’t include benefits, so we can safely double that to ~$2,000,000,000,000 ($2T). Don’t forget that average salaries for Gov’t are much higher than the national average, but lets be generous and go with the simple, low number of $2T annually in gov’t salaries and benefits.

Now, the national average private employee pay of $42,000 per person. Let’s estimate federal taxes paid out – so let’s settle at 20% of pay is for fed taxes. 20% X $42,000 = $8400. So that means it takes the taxes from ~11 private company employees to pay the salaries and benefits of 1 Gov’t worker. 11 x 22,000,000 = 242,000,000. That means it takes the taxes of 242M private company employees to pay JUST gov’t wages and benefits, assuming the low average pay of $42,000 per gov’t worker.

How many working citizens of the US are there? And where does the rest of the money come from to pay for gov’t activities, social programs, etc?

The figures are “totally unacceptable and disrespectful to hardworking American taxpayers,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “If you’re on the federal payroll, the very least you can do is pay your taxes.”